Producers in southwestern and west-central Saskatchewan who lost stacked forage to wildlife feeding last winter may see a bump up in their compensation.
The Saskatchewan and federal governments on Wednesday announced a “supplemental freight adjustment” to their wildlife damage compensation program, administered by Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corp. (SCIC).
SCIC, the province said, has “reassessed and finalized” the 2022-23 program’s values for forage products to include an adjustment payment, meant to compensate eligible producers for the additional cost of transporting feed.
The adjustment is meant to reflect “higher-than-normal replacement feed costs in specific parts of the province.”
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“In southwestern Saskatchewan, there are producers who have suffered multiple years of dry conditions and experienced an increase of wildlife damage,” provincial Ag Minister David Marit said in a release. “To maintain their herds, some needed to travel throughout the province to replace feed damaged by wildlife.”
The adjustment will only apply on program claims registered between Sept. 1, 2022 and March 31, 2023, and only on claims for stacked forage yard sites in the southwest and west-central regions of the province. To be eligible, the wildlife damage claim must have been filed after last Sept. 1.
The freight adjustments will be determined by location and will be applied only to the tonnes of feed that were lost or damaged due to wildlife, the province said.
Among its other features, the wildlife damage compensation program, funded through the federal/provincial Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, pays out on wildlife damage to stacked hay, silage, and bales. The hay and bales in question must be placed in stacks to be eligible for compensation.
All Saskatchewan producers, whether SCIC customers or not, are eligible for compensation under the program. A producer must contact his or her local SCIC office as soon as damage is spotted, but there is no enrolment required beforehand to register a claim. — Glacier FarmMedia Network
